


every twisting thought and plea

by GraceEliz



Series: The Eldritch Collection [5]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Eldritch, Gen, Post-Episode: s03e17 Ghosts of Mortis, not pain but also not exactly fluff either, the Mortis gods, the father the son the daughter and the reasons not to visit new places
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:00:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27940064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: His hands curl above her chest, darkness curling around her, safe and warm like their rooms in the Temple or being in group meditation. Exhausted, far too exhausted, and now she feels sore everywhere like Force exhaustion, she slides back into the comfort of sleep-dark. She is safe with her Masters.She wakes again briskly, alert in seconds and refreshed, this time on their ship surrounded in gunmetal-grey and the myriad tones of their men’s spark-like presences scattered around them like flour-marks on a countertop.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano
Series: The Eldritch Collection [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1992514
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51





	every twisting thought and plea

**Author's Note:**

> for Ace who helped write part of this and brainstorm the concept as a whole.

In the wake of whatever that was in the shrines, when she was under the hold of the Son – the Dark Side of the Force in limited, sentient form, how much more terrifying can her life become? – she lies on what feels like marble tiling, like the tiles of the Temple’s baths, and thinks. Starting at her head she traces, cautiously, down the lines of her body. She has never felt better, or at least, not recently, as if her whole body has been doused in a bathtub of bacta, minus that sweet sharp taste, of course. Ahsoka was given life by the daughter, right? That’s her very vague memory of what happened, but she cannot sense her, or the astoundingly bright Light she’d emitted, like the hot sun of Shili. Surely, she reasons, still laid out like a corpse on the marble-or-whatever, if the daughter went into her, then she would sense her? A bond, connection, anything. But she senses nothing of the sort, no great powers except her Master distant like a thunderstorm over the Temple.

She can barely even sense her own Masters, their hot-love-power and serenity-strength-perseverance merely wisps down the bond, as if there’s a whole system between them.

“Soka?”

_Master,_ she thinks in relief, then, frantically as she senses the change, _Master?_

“Rest easy, little one. It’s okay,” soothes Master Obi-Wan, voice warm and smooth and so kind, his hand warm on her forehead. Slowly she blinks, wondering at the peculiar sense of him, his face slowly coming into sharp focus.

“Your eyes – you, and wings,” she breathes in awe. When she stretches her hand up the ragged wings solidify darkly, and she touches them; under their new weight her grandmaster staggers a little, but they’re human-warm under her touch and so alive that she gasps.

“Ah, child, if you would perhaps envision them a little lighter, my dear one,” he croaks with a mild grimace of discomfort, and she flushes, confused but obedient. The wings fade away as she does it, imagines them disappeared almost instinctually. “Thank you. How do you feel?”

“I feel...nothing,” she says, or she thinks she says, maybe she didn’t. “I think,” _I think they did something to me._

“They did something to us all,” mutters her grandmaster. Above a pale shape grows and she finches and squints and – and –

The white condor is now at her feet, on its knees, crying out in Anakin’s voice.

“Soka, darling, you must relax, let him go,” coaxes Obi-Wan, his voice velvet, like the dark perfume of a high-class shop. His hands curl above her chest, darkness curling around her, safe and warm like their rooms in the Temple or being in group meditation. Exhausted, far too exhausted, and now she feels sore everywhere like Force exhaustion, she slides back into the comfort of sleep-dark. She is safe with her Masters.

She wakes again briskly, alert in seconds and refreshed, this time on their ship surrounded in gunmetal-grey and the myriad tones of their men’s spark-like presences scattered around them like flour-marks on a countertop. The griffin is curled in a warm green-white pile on her lap, and the bat-thing is draped over her shoulders like a weighted blanket, the source of the cool darkness which is like entering the inner Temple in summer. She is safe and enshrouded, but her masters need to be human again. She thinks about it, remembers how her wanting had effected them on Mortis, and focuses her thoughts. Bring them back to me, she asks the Force, bring my family back human again.

In loud bursts of pure Force energy the Mortis-gods tumble down to the ground from her, her Master a bright flash of pure-life and her Grandmaster the low constancy of everything-must-end-even-this; she stops their falls with a single thought, setting them down.

“What happened to me,” she demands, afraid but also feeling the spread of eternal peace across her soul. Everything feels different – intangible, almost, and yet there is so little outside of her awareness. Her Master is afraid, but her Grandmaster is not, merely deeply thoughtful as he looks down at her.

He touches her hand and passes through it before she has chance to freak out.

“Grandmaster!” she shrieks, lurching away as her heart begins to race. “What is going on? What’s happened to me?”

For a minute he stays silent, studying her then Anakin in turns, watching them with a curious intensity that reminds her of the burning-amber eyes of the Son. Habitually, his hand goes up his chin even as he leans backwards onto his other hand. “I fear the same thing that happened to us. When the gods on that planet, Mortis, died, their essences came into us. We have taken on certain abilities, I believe.”

“Why don’t I remember that,” whispers her Master, spooked, eyes flaring green-white. “Why don’t I remember?”

Grandmaster reaches for them, drawing them into his embrace as if they’re still Younglings and they cling to each other and the sense of balance that they provide to the lineage-bond between them. “Because life is about rebirth and beginnings, and unselfishness, but the Darkness clings and holds and remembers. We’re balances, now,” he says, and then because Ahsoka still doesn’t understand, “I remember because the Dark does, but Anakin forgot because that is the nature of the Light, to move on.”

Ahsoka frowns down at her hands and watches them fade in and out as she thinks. Fade, she tells them and they fade. “Why could I do that to you? Why am I – when I think, about you and Master and me, it happens, what I’m thinking about, it happens. Why – what have they done to me?”

He holds her close, reaches down the bond to her. “You are the Father, my child. You are the grey, in the Light and watching the Dark. Just as I can now taste the rise of the Dark and can hold it back, and Anakin can see the trace of the Light and what must be done, you are the centre-point. He must have passed into you when he brought you back to life – or rather, when he helped Anakin to do so. I fear it will take a great deal of meditation to find ourselves again.”

She almost wants to cry. “I want to go home.”


End file.
